Photo Caption: A visit to the pumpkin patch with members of the family program that Mary planned in October! Good vibes, good times.

After several attempts, I parallel park on our street in Baltimore and turn off my car. It is momentarily dark, especially now that the sun is setting so early.

I take a breath. I ask myself to smile. I take another breath, and then I do.

Words to describe today: chaotic, active, good. This tends to be the way of it working in the family program at Marian House, a transitional housing organization for single mothers and their children. Crises often emerge, and the stakes feel high when people’s well-being is on the line. A lot of days, by the time I park in front of the row home I share with my community member Ellie, I feel drained. If I cannot smile because I am sad or processing something, that is okay. I sit with those emotions instead. But most days, I do find a smile pulling on my cheeks, breaking through the layer of tiredness that settled over me throughout the day. How can I not smile? This is what I was made for.

Being a Mercy Volunteer in recent weeks has oscillated between emptying me and fulfilling me, and what this rhythm has called me to is the reminder to be more. The emptying out is not a draining of my abilities but a positive pouring out of myself to find where I am at my limits. And once I have poured myself out, then I am able to be refilled by the grace of God, who makes me endlessly joyful. I have experienced many other emotions throughout my first couple of months at Marian House, but I have been grateful to find that none of them have made me feel empty in a way that cannot be refilled to a greater volume than I felt before.

Trepidation was my dominant emotion when I learned that one of my responsibilities at Marian House would be to drive the bus. Significantly wider than the Sisters of Mercy’s Honda Civic, to which I was becoming accustomed, I wondered how I was supposed to move this vehicle around the foreign streets of Baltimore without meekly hitting the curb every time I attempted a wide right turn.

Hurt was my dominant emotion when I learned that some of our residents thought I was playing favorites with the pantry. The Family Program food pantry is my responsibility, and running it involves tracking and putting in orders for new inventory, portioning out and freezing food for families, and distributing food at a fair rate to ensure that everyone who has access to the pantry will find food waiting for them once they get there. Though I felt I had been straining myself to be fair to everyone, some residents had the impression that I was treating the food in the pantry as my own instead of theirs. My efforts for the community had been interpreted as possessive.

Guilt was my dominant emotion when I told Pepper that I could not play with her because I had work to do. Her five-year-old eyes had not read my job description; they just read another adult who was behaving as though she did not have the time of day to get to know her. How, when I have work to complete by the end of the day, can I both do my job well and show this child that she is more valuable than all the work in the world?

The antidote to each of these troubling emotions has been to receive and be fueled by the grace of God. Trepidation, hurt, and guilt cannot withstand the force of Love, which comes alive in each of us and is alive in me. I am still learning how to tangibly perform well at my job—I have to make decisions that prioritize certain time, relationships, tasks, or concerns over others, and I do not think I always take the most efficient course. With experience I should improve, but in the meantime the difficult emotions do not retain a hold on me. Instead, I feel liberated by the knowledge that I am working toward realizing the fullness of who I was made to be. In stretching to the limits of love and effort I can pour out, I feel I am becoming more myself: a daughter of God, a member of the Body, a follower of Christ—all in my particular way.

I invite you, wherever you are investing your efforts, to engage life in a way that surrenders to the emptying and refilling cycle of service. I invite you to be more of who you are.

Mary Quirk: Baltimore, Maryland